BFI

It is difficult to discuss Evolution without giving away a lot of its surprises. Needless-to-say, Lucile Hadzihalilovic’s masterful film (only her second in a decade) is disturbing, beautiful and restrained. Mysterious from beginning to end, the film challenges and intrigues, reaching down inside to grab hold of something within us all that is ancient and primordial, engaging on a level that exists within not only a collective imagination but our collective biology

One often wonders what they would be capable of if their life depended on it. Would you take charge, delegate responsibility but do your part, or would you completely break down and cower in the corner? Would you be able to think clearly enough to find a solution to the problem or would your emotions be too overpowering?

In 2013, renowned Russian filmmaker Alexey German died before he could complete his astonishing final film Hard to Be a God which, after being completed by his wife, screenwriter Svetlana Karmalita, and his son Alexey German Jnr, screened at last year’s London Film Festival.

A quick search of the film Ruined Heart: Another Love Story between a Criminal and a Whore reveals that it is an expanded version of a 2012 short by Filipino poet Khavn De La Cruz (known simply as KHAVN) and that pretty much explains the feature’s shortcomings in a nutshell.

Yakuza Apocalypse is the greatest yakuza vampire movie ever made. It also appears to be the only yakuza vampire movie ever made, and if Miike’s surreal, violent, hilarious and unashamedly bonkers film is anything to go by, it will probably be the last.

Director Pablo Larraín is known for his extremely fascinating social commentaries about his native Chile. Most famously, he tackled the Pinochet regime and its legacy with his trilogy comprising Tony Manero, Post-Mortem­ and ­No. With The Club, Larraín looks at Catholicism, another major Chilean institution, and the abuses of power that can occur within the priesthood.

The objectification of women and the ravenous consumption of celebrity culture are some of the very clear themes that inform the narrative of The Corpse of Anna Fritz, the debut feature of Spanish director Hèctor Hernández Vicens.

Following the brilliant A Touch of Sin, auteur and Chinese master Jia Zhangke returns with a similarly structured, yet more narratively linked, portrait of China in the new millennium. Mountains May Depart is two-thirds of a gripping relationship drama that captures not only a China in constant flux, but also the universality of human experience.

To describe Bone Tomahawk as a “horror-Western” is good shorthand, but could be a little misleading. The film indeed has horror elements but novelist turned screenwriter/director S. Craig Zahler seems more interested in spending time with his four main protagonists as they travel across country, letting their different personalities and world views, and the harshness of the terrain, challenge them on their journey

Assassination is pure entertainment. Director Choi Dong-hoon pulls together an astonishing group of talent both in front and behind the camera to portray a story close to South Korea’s heart with humour, pathos, gorgeous cinematography and a series of impressively bombastic action scenes to create one of the most exciting adventure films in recent years.

Der Nachtmahr Directed by Akiz Written by Achim Bornhak Germany, 2015 German nu-techno artist Akiz opens his debut film with a meek disclaimer to ‘play this film loud’, a rare moment of quiet trepidation before all sorts of sonic and symbiotic hell breaks loose. Tina (Carolyn Genzkow) and her teenage friends are veterans of the …

Suffragette Written by Abi Morgan Directed by Sarah Gavron UK, 2015 As the high-profile spearhead of UK film culture, the London Film Festival thrives on promoting the heritage films that its indigenous industry clings to so dearly: the historical and period dramas which keep the production designers, wardrobe wranglers and most of the Royal Shakespeare Company solvent throughout another procurement drive of Elizabethan ruffs, …

Stories about slavery can be a tricky proposition, especially if your story is from the Caucasian point of view, because there is a delicate balance to be struck when considering the protagonist’s actions and motivations.

Between 1939 and 1947, the number of divorces in Britain rose from 9,970 to 24,847. In Summer of the latter year, Picturegoer magazine ran a piece on the way in which marriage was perceived in the country’s theatres at the time, refuting strong claims from figures as influential as the Archbishop of York that sensationalism on screens was partly to blame. “The …

In 1983, the final Monty Python film, The Meaning Of Life, was released with a rather ambitious title and intent to discover, well, the meaning of life. Thirty years later, and Terry Gilliam returns to these enterprising realms with his new film The Zero Theorem, a codex volcanic in enthusiasm yet insipid at its core. Terry does good press: he barks an intriguing sound bite, citing that his latest ode to chaos is an “impossible look at nothing,” which is certain to prick the interest of existentialists everywhere.

Poor Llewyn Davis is not at a good point in his life. In February of 1961, he is a struggling, bearded bohemian shivering through a frosty Greenwich Village, a folk musician seeking the next gig just to keep the wolf from the door. With few possessions other than the fraying clothes on his back and his trusty guitar, he relies on the charity of others to keep a temporary roof over his head, oscillating from staying with two wedded musical companions in the tight-knit folk scene, Jean (Carey Mulligan, deliciously spiteful) and Jim Berkey (Justin Timberlake, polished) and the middle-class Gorfiens , the wealthy, perky parents of Llewyn’s musical partner, revealed to have committed suicide a few months earlier. Davis is a man scorned, sneering at others and certain of his superior musical skills. He’s not the most likable sort, as his futile attempts to escape the confines of his self-imposed cage make for a colourfully arranged period crooner.

The Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky has been well served by cinema, especially his major works Crime & Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, and The Idiot, all of which have received numerous adaptations throughout the decades. The latter was lavished with a recent Estonian take, after receiving a Japanese decoding by Kurosawa no less, as well as Indian and (naturally) Soviet versions. It has taken until 2013 for a filmmaker brave enough to approach Dostoyevsky’s binary second novel; there is a certain numerical sense of doubling, since Richard Ayoade has decided to allocate his second film as The Double, an ambitiously promising plea following Submarine back in 2010.

The Oscar-nominated director and writer of last year’s potent Wall Steet drama Margin Call has circumnavigated the perils of sophomore filmmaking with All Is Lost. This is J.C. Chandor’s remarkable nautical thriller, plunging its audience into a whirlpool nightmare scenario. In a solo role, Robert Redford is a nameless figure, a stoic seaman sailing through the Pacific roughly 1,700 miles from civilisation before being jolted awake after an abandoned cargo container ruptures a yawning gape in his modest single-berth schooner.

Venerable Woody Grant (a grizzled Bruce Dern) has a singular purpose in mind, to get from his adopted Montana home to neighbouring Nebraska to collect a million-dollar cheque that a suspiciously speculative postal disclaimer has promised to honour. Elderly and suffering with decaying mental functions, Woody clearly can’t see through the marketing scam, and his wife Kate (June Squibb) and son David (Will Forte) grow increasingly exasperated at his dangerous footbound expeditions before arriving at a mutual solution:

Notorious Directed by Alfred Hitchcock Written by Ben Hecht Starring Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains Of the fourteen films that Hitchcock directed in the forties the critical consensus tends to focus on Shadow Of A Doubt, Hitchcock’s personal favourite of his fifty-three pictures, and Notorious, the romantic spy caper which features the alluring pairing of Ingrid Bergman …

Young & Innocent Directed by Alfred Hitchcock Starring Derrick De Marney, Nova Pilbeam, George Curzon It is a matter of uncertain serendipity that my first film of the BFI’s Hitchcock season happened to be Young & Innocent,  reputedly Hitch’s favourite of his British pictures, now widely considered as the first cohesion of style and substance that displays many of …